But We Can't
by Dethia1101
Summary: They are young. They are foolish. But those things, THEY are repairable. Mistakes made now can be rectified. But the things they never did will always haunt them. They are cowards. Those three words will forever echo in their heads. They will always wonder. Always question. But it will never go away. "But We Can't."


**Hola, mi muchachos! Como estas? Yes, I'm aware i am a flimsy bitch, but due to my current _Teen Wolf_ love (READ:addiction) that this popped outta mah head after watching the second season. Personally, I fucking HATE Jackson because he's a JackASS, but my OC loved him. =-="" would you believe me if I told you Mary was supposed to be for Dereck?**

**Oh, and the perfect frigging song for this is**_ "Sweet_ Nothing"** by Calvin Harris**

* * *

"_A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him."_

_- Brendan Francis_

* * *

"_I wish…." he whispered out, voice hoarse from yelling._

_She gazed at him with pain-filled, honey eyes. "I know." She told him. "So do I."_

_He let out a heavy sigh and held her closer. In response she let her fingers run through his hair, relaxing him again. _

"_But we can't."_

* * *

He was watching her again.

Lydia's quiet best friend Mary, who stood contently in the other girl's shadow. The weird girl that always had her kindle or her newest book acquisition in hand.

The girl that wore baggy, too-big shirts and a pair of worn blue jeans more often than not though she had the money and access to buy the same labels as Lydia.

Mary always had a small smile on her face, a genuine one, and behind a pair of simple, wire-rim glasses were a set of eyes that were a warm honey shade. She had tousled mahogany hair that she swore up and down that she brushed down every morning, and hands that were slightly calloused at the tips of her fingers and the top of her palms.

He had to stop watching her.

He wouldn't admit it, but he liked her simplicity. Her simple way of saying something that to straight to the heart of the matter. The way her eyes lit up when she had a brand-new book to read; the excited smile on her face. Her laugh, not a sarcastic sounding giggle like Lydia, but a loud chuckle that she tried to smother behind her hand even as her eyes watered and her shoulders shook. The way she soothed the hurts of others in calm, caring tones that had even the coldest of hearts feeling warm on the inside.

He didn't want to stop watching her.

He didn't like the way that whenever Scotts' loony friend Stiles came around she would give him a look. Not a 'Go away you bother me' look but a slightly adoring look, much like the one Lydia gave him when she thought he wasn't looking. The small smile that was always on her face and how she lit up like a Christmas tree whenever he'd speak to her. The way her eyes followed him down the hallway, and the wistful sigh that left her lips whenever she saw him trying to speak to Lydia, or saw him walking down the hallway without seeing her when she waved at him or called out a greeting.

He didn't like it because it wasn't him.

He wanted to be the one he gave those looks. He wanted to be the one to make her smile as though she just was handed the only thing she would ever want in the world. He wanted to make the sighs of longing go away, make them sighs of happiness. He wanted to make sure she wouldn't be ignored.

He wanted to be together with her. But they can't.

He wanted things the way they were that night. That night when Lydia was drunk downstairs at Danny's party, Mary, and He were in the guest bedroom.

It had been during the summer before their freshman year.

* * *

She had ditched the party because she didn't like them. He ditched because he didn't like the people at the party. He was drunk, sad, and angry, she was lightly buzzed, and sipping her wine cooler as she read offs her Kindle. He was angry. The alcohol wasn't making his fears go away. It wasn't making him feel invincible.

So he just barged into the room, ignoring the small figure curled up against the headboard who was staring at him with wide, worried honey eyes. He threw himself onto the seat in the corner of the room and grabbed another can of beer from the six-pack he had lifted from the fridge.

He had nearly bit her head off when she had asked him if he was all right. When he lied through his teeth saying that he was fine she was quick to tell him he was doing so, and when she did he snapped. He began yelling and pacing, gesturing angrily at everything, explaining why he was not all right, saying why he had to be alright, and why it was that a scrawny little bookworm loser like her wouldn't understand what he was going through. And then he sat down on the edge of the bed and cried. It wasn't any hulking, body shaking sobs. No, it was just silent tears as he stared off into space.

Then she moved. Throughout the entire rant, she had stayed stock-still, following his every move and every word and absorbing all of it. Mary scooted forward from her position at the headboard and moved to sit next to him. She moved to but her hand on his shoulder and the moment her fingers touched him, he violently shook him off. Stubborn, she placed her hand on his shoulder and began to speak. She addressed every problem with precision, both making him see reason and offering comfort, something he needed desperately. By the time she was finished he was relaxed and felt better than he had in a while. Her hand had migrated down his arm to her hand were she was playing with it, rubbing her own hands on his to get the feel of it in a way that was in no way sexual, but made tender because of it.

Their eyes met while she was making a small joke about him calling her a 'scrawny little bookworm loser' and that she protested the 'scrawny' part of the title. She and Lydia both maintained that it wouldn't hurt her to lose a good twenty pounds, and He was feeling so light, that he didn't have the mind to stop what his body was doing.

He kissed her. The hand she wasn't holding came up to cradle her cheek and when she felt his teeth on her lip and she tried to make a sound when he sled deftly into her mouth with his tongue and almost against her will she began to kiss him back.

Kissing her only made him feel lighter, but her senses caught up to her too soon and he was pushed away and she had fallen off the bed and she'd pushed herself to the wall. She looked up at him with wide, darkened honey eyes that asked a question he couldn't answer. He lips, usually a pale pink, were darker and swollen slightly, and her chest was heaving as she fought for breath.

He managed to get out an apology before she escaped the room, a blush staining her cheeks and he sat in the room, shocked, before gathering the abandoned six-pack, drinking about three more beers, and falling asleep on the bed, drunk as hell.

It was two days before he saw her again (mainly because he needed a day of recover from the party), and he visited her on the pretense he was returning her kindle to her, which she had left abandoned due to what happened.

Mary had opened the door and before she saw him, she saw her kindle. And what happened hurt him deeply, but it was a pleasant pain that and he was okay with experiencing again. She looked at it, her honey eyes lit up, and the biggest smile he had ever seen on anybody swept across her face leaving a glowing girl in her place. When he offered it to her, she finally saw who held her kindle her smile dimmed, and though it was still there, it was noticeably awkward. He greeted her, and then summoning his usual brash and self-centered demeanor, told her that he was drunk off his ass and that it shouldn't have happened, mainly because he was _the_ most popular guy in the school and she was some nobody that sat in Lydia's shadow.

Mary smiled at him, no longer awkward but understanding, and said that she knew that, it was just strange to her, as it was her first kiss.

He managed to mutter a quiet apology before shrugging and looking away, acting as though he never said the words and was fully bored with this conversation, though what he really wanted to do was ask how she had never been kissed before when she did it so well.

She just kept on smiling at him and, salvaging his pride acted, as though he never apologized. She told him rather openly that if he ever needed to talk to someone, or just have someone listen as he "ranted like a lunatic straight out of the local crazy house" she'd be there.

With that she bid him goodbye and closed the door.

They met together a few times, him taking up her offer of talking to him, listen to him rage about his life. It was only a couple of days before school began again at Beacon Hills High school. It was just that, last time, he lost control as Mary laughed at something he had said, something stupid, and kissed her again, and just like last time she responded almost instinctively before gaining her wits and wrenching herself away.

She was crying this time though, tears streaming from her eyes as she yelled at him about how doing that to her was cruel, when she hadn't done anything to him, anything at all. She stopped yelling at him abruptly, and just whispered to him to get out before slumping onto her bed and crying silently.

He told her that he was sorry before walking out, cursing himself from there to Timbuktu all the while. He sat at home and stared at his phone for a while before picking up his phone and texting Mary. Telling her the truth.

That it felt good kissing her, that he felt light for the first time in a while when he talked to her. That the world was right when he was near her. Then he apologized again, just said "Sorry" because he knew as well as she did that being together would only bring them trouble.

And then she texted back. She said that it was the same for her, that even though he was the only person she had ever kissed (He was very pleased with that), it was the same with her. That she was sorry, too.

They didn't text each other again, and He acted as though nothing had happened at all, that they had barely ever spoken to each other. She acted the same.

* * *

He never clued anyone into the fact that there were times when all he wanted to do was drag her out and find someplace secluded and kiss her drunk. That he wanted to talk to her in public without potentially destroying her high school social career.

They were two days into the school year and they had study period together, and they had the previous class together so as they walked out of the class and headed for the library, they did so together. And while watching her he just snapped, grabbed her by the arm and found a quiet little alcove and kissed her hard. He kissed her protests away and it took her biting his tongue hard enough to draw blood. When he hissed in pain (he refused to admit that it turned him on a little) and backed off from where he had nearly made her a smear on the wall he was kissing her so hard she was looking up at him with dark, but watery, eyes.

She touched her lips and then glared up at him. She called him a heartless bastard and brushed pass him, rushing to the nearest girls restroom.

She hadn't spoken to him since.

* * *

He was watching her again.

He hated how she acted as though nothing happened, whether they were surrounded by their friends or alone in a crowd.

He hated how she wouldn't speak to him in private, that if he came to the door she would ignore him or tell him to leave. How she wouldn't respond to his texts.

Everything around him was going to pieces, and they one person whom he could talk to wouldn't speak to him.

Finally, one day he got a text for Mary. It told him that he could talk to her if he really needed it. He quickly texted her that he did and he sped to her house. When he knocked on the door, she took one look at him and opened the door wide for him to enter.

He sat on her couch and waited for him to join him, and when she did she had a red Gatorade in her hands. He took it thankfully.

They drank in silence for a bit before a apology escaped her lips, and before he could ask why she was apologizing to her, she asked if he was alright.

Somehow those were the magic words, because he shot off the couch and began to curse the earth, the sky and everything in-between. All of the things that had built up just flowed off of his shoulder as he yelled about it.

Then he slumped onto the couch and put his head on his hands. After a few moments, Mary joined him on the couch, slipped her arms around his shoulders and hugged him.

He told her that he wished.

She told him she wished too and he moved to hug her back.

And they agreed that they couldn't.

He kissed her. This time she didn't push away.

And then he left.

* * *

He, Jackson Whitmore, was walking away from what he wanted, what he felt he needed more than anything.

What he wanted, what he needed was a beautiful girl whose name was Marilyn Brewer.

But he couldn't. He wanted to keep his title.

She couldn't. She wanted to keep her friend.

So they couldn't. Because they needed their lives as they were. They feared their lives changing.

They were, truthfully, cowards of the highest degree, for not only did they refuse to fight for what they wanted, but refused to believe that they truly wanted it at all.

* * *

"_For it was not into my ear you whispered, but into my heart. It was not my lips you kissed, but my soul."_

_-Judy Garland_

* * *

**Personally, I could've ended this a bit better, but I drew this blank and it yelled at me "TAKE THAT BITCH!" so I'm stuck with this. **

**A thousand apologies. **

**Yours in Fandom, **

**Dethia**


End file.
